Matt & Jen Simerson

From the book, The Forests of Michigan, describing the timber industry in Michigan from about 1880 to 1920:

The final lumber tally from the Michigan timber boom is staggering: approximately 161 billion board feet of pine (50 percent more than that produced in Wisconsin and Minnesota combined) plus 50 billion board feet of cedar, hemlock, and hardwoods. … The value of lumber output from Michigan’s pineries exceeded by a billion dollars the gold extracted in the 60 years that followed the rush to California in 1849 (Wells 1978).

After the boom, virtually nothing remained of that vast Michigan pinery whose end was believed by many to be unreachable.

When the forests were depleted, the lumber barons packed up and left with their fortunes.

From, Mother Earth Mother Board

In 1870, a new cable was laid between England and France, and Napoleon III used it to send a congratulatory message to Queen Victoria. Hours later, a French fisherman hauled the cable up into his boat, identified it as either the tail of a sea monster or a new species of gold-bearing seaweed, and cut off a chunk to take home.

When written well, history is fascinating, and often hilarious.

No one who has not gazed upon a beautiful, mirror-like lake, surrounded by an unbroken forest of tall pines and picturesque cedars and hemlocks, can form anything like a correct idea of the picture afforded the early settlers in the village of Clam Lake [later renamed to Cadillac]. It seems almost sacrilege that such beauty of scenery should have had to yield before the insatiable maw of the woodman’s ax and saw-mill’s glittering teeth, but the marts of commerce have no sentiment or romance, and natures loveliness must be yielded up to the demands of business, and the glory of her forests and the grandeur of its solitudes must be laid waste that man may reap fortunes out of what it has taken her centuries to produce. If the denuded lands had been turned into waving wheat fields there would have seemed to be come recompense for the ruthless slaughter of the forests, but to see the vast areas of lands covered with nothing but stumps and a stubby growth of bushes, makes one wish that the task of cutting away the great forests of pine had been much less rapidly done, so that the present and future generations could have had a glimpse of their royal beauty and sublimity. But how useless it is to moralize.

— John H Wheeler, History of Wexford County, Michigan, 1903, pp 287-288

It has 4 drive slots.

It’s fast (enough).

I can configure each disk independently.

It’s on my Amazon wishlist, to buy later this year.

For the past two years, I got accustomed to not making phone calls while driving to or from work. It’s an 18 minute drive and in the middle of the drive, around 99 & 105th, my call would get dropped. Every single time. During those two years I used an original, 3G, and 3G S iPhone.

I picked up my iPhone 4 on June 24th. I used my phone a lot that day, calling via FaceTime and normal calls. During my drive home from work, I stayed connected all the way home, for the very first time.

A few days later, I was at a lecture at the Mountaineers on Sand Point Way. AT&T coverage there is meager at best. I experimented there with a SSH session to my home computer, and kept the connection up for almost an hour. That would never have worked with my older iPhones.

This last weekend I climbed Mt. Rainier again. Most of the climbers in our party left their phones in the truck at the trailhead. That is generally wise. Trying to use a mobile phone in the mountains is typically an exercise in frustration.

I had preloaded my iPhone with topo maps of the area and took it out every hour or so to capture waypoints. While pocketed, I had the iPhone in Airplane Mode, which disables all the radios (phone, GPS, wifi). To take waypoints, I’d toggle off Airplane Mode, let the GPS sync, take the waypoint, toggle Airplane Mode back on, and put the phone away.

The surprise was that nearly every time I turned off Airplane Mode, I had an AT&T signal. Getting a signal is one thing. Being able to use it is entirely another. None of us climbers believed it was usable reception until I was able to send out a SMS to each of our wives, letting them know we had gotten permits and were on the route we had hoped to climb.

I can replicate the signal meter issue that so many people have made a big deal about by holding it the wrong way. Then my reception is comparable to previous iPhones (a single bar of coverage in my downstairs). When I avoid holding it that way, I can get outstanding reception. I am quite pleased with the reception of my new iPhone.

This morning Jen was in the kitchen pitting Rainier cherries. I’m in the dining room, stemming Rainier cherries. Lucas trotted into kitchen, saw mommy pitting cherries and started to help. Mommy swelled with pride at her little helper. When the last cherry was pitted and dropped into the bowl, a burst of laughter erupted as Jen realized exactly who Lucas was assisting.

Lucas pranced around the corner with his prize, a bowl of pitted Rainier cherries cradled against his chest, with one hand shoveling cherries from the bowl to the mouth. He placed the bowl at his place and climbed up into his chair, intent on consuming an entire cherry cobbler’s worth of cherries in a single go.

I think that boy and I may be related.